INTRODUCTION

The role of housing and the built and social environments is understudied as a social determinant of mental health. This study leverages a natural experiment created by the ongoing redevelopment of a public housing community to examine the effects of simultaneously improving the housing, built, and social environments on mental health for low-income, minoritized residents.

METHODS

This study analyzed longitudinal data from adult participants in the Watts Neighborhood Health Study. The cohort study includes residents in the public housing community being redeveloped (treatment group) and those in two nearby public housing sites (comparison group) in Watts, Los Angeles. ANCOVA regression models were used to examine whether residents in the treatment group had better mental health scores at follow-up (2021-22) compared to residents in the comparison group, conditional on mental health scores at baseline (2018-19) and other covariates. The analyses leveraged plausibly exogenous variation within the treatment group in exposure to the redevelopment to examine whether mental health at follow-up varied differentially by proximity to the redeveloped areas.

RESULTS

Analyses showed the treatment group experienced slightly fewer depressive symptoms than the comparison group at follow-up. They also revealed a non-linear relationship between proximity to redeveloped areas and residents' mental health within the treatment group.

CONCLUSIONS

Comprehensive redevelopment of low-income minoritized communities is a complex process that entails uneven mental health impacts on residents in the short term. Strategies to help spread these benefits more evenly may be needed.